The fastest gains come from guests who had already chosen you: defend your hotel’s name in paid search, make the booking finish on your own site without an enquiry form, and show the direct rate beside the platform rate. After that it is local search, review velocity and keeping the guest after checkout. Most independents can move a meaningful share of existing demand direct before spending anything on new demand.
Almost every guide to this question starts with new demand: content, campaigns, social. That is the expensive half. The cheap half is the guests who had already chosen you and were routed through a platform anyway, and most independents have more of those than they think.
Start where the demand already is
Search for your own hotel by name, from a phone, not logged in. Count how many results appear above your own website.
In most markets the answer is at least one, and it is an OTA bidding on your brand. That guest knew your name. They were going to stay with you. You will pay commission on them anyway.
A brand campaign on your own name is normally the lowest cost-per-booking channel a property has, because you are not buying interest — you are defending interest you already earned. It is also the single change on this page that can pay back inside a month.
The path has to finish
Open your own site on a phone and try to book two nights. Time it.
If the journey ends in an enquiry form, you are asking a traveller who can book instantly on a platform to instead send a message and wait. Some will. Most compare two properties and book the one that finishes.
| Where guests drop | What it looks like | Usual fix |
|---|---|---|
| No live availability | “Contact us for availability” | Connect the booking engine to the channel manager |
| Price behind an enquiry | Rate shown only after a form | Show the rate on the room page |
| Checkout too long | Account creation, six fields, no wallet | Guest checkout, Apple Pay, three fields |
| Mobile breaks | Date picker unusable one-handed | Test on a real phone on hotel wi-fi |
| No confirmation | Guest unsure the booking took | Immediate confirmation that looks paid-for |
None of this is a marketing problem. It is why a marketing budget spent before fixing it usually disappoints.
Give a reason that survives parity
Parity clauses restrict what you advertise. They generally do not restrict what you give a guest who is already talking to you.
So the direct offer is rarely a lower number. It is the late checkout, the room in the quieter wing, breakfast included, the airport transfer at cost. Those are worth more to a guest than five per cent and cost you less than the commission you keep.
Read your own agreement before acting on that paragraph. The terms differ by market and by contract.
Be findable without the platform
A guest who has not heard of you finds you two ways: in local search, and in an answer from an assistant. Both are neglected by independents in this market.
- Google Business Profile is the highest-return neglected asset most properties have. Complete it, keep the photos current, answer every review, and keep the booking link pointed at your own site rather than a platform listing.
- Review velocity matters more than review average past a point. A steady flow of recent reviews outranks a higher score that stopped two years ago.
- Assistants answer with a shortlist. A property whose content only appears after JavaScript runs is invisible to the crawlers that build those answers.
Keep the guest after checkout
The platform owns the first booking. It does not own the second one unless you let it.
A guest who stayed with you has given you their email at check-in. That is the cheapest list in the business and most independents never use it — no pre-arrival message, no thank-you, no reason to come back, no referral ask. A returning guest costs nothing to acquire and books direct by default.
What to measure
Not traffic. Three numbers:
- Direct share of room nights, monthly. The headline.
- Effective commission as a share of total revenue — commission invoiced divided by all room revenue, not just channel revenue.
- Cost per direct booking, all acquisition spend included. If it is below your effective commission rate, every booking you move is profit.
That third number is the one that tells you whether to keep spending. Most properties never calculate it, which is why the direct-versus-platform argument usually gets settled by opinion.
What we do on a property is on the hotels and camps page, and the full sequence for any travel business is on the OTA dependence page.
Our free audit covers search visibility, AI-answer presence, booking flow and what your OTA channel is costing you. Written, and yours whether you hire us or not.